Monday, November 17, 2014

We have our team! Below you will find the roster of participants for the Fifth Annual Painting Challenge. This year we have 72 hobbyists rolling out, up by almost a dozen from last year - the more the merrier, wot! We have folks from 12 years of age to, well, let's say not 12 years of age (;OP) and coming from 14 nations: Australia, Belgium, Canada, Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany, Holland, Ireland, Italy, New Zealand, Spain, United States, and the UK. Looking at this I think this year's Challenge's motto of 'Unity through Paint' may not be too far off the mark.

Note: To all the participants, please review the roster to make sure that you're there and that your points target and the link to your blog (if you have one) are correct.

I also want to take this opportunity to announce that there will be a few changes to how the Challenge will be accessed and administered for this edition.

1) I have created an exclusive Painting Challenge blog for the event. So when the event kicks off on December 5th it is there where you'll be wanting to go. The address of the Painting Challenge blog is:

In addition, you can find a button to it ('The Painting Challenge') at the top of this blog.

Why do this? Well, I believe the Challenge has now grown large enough to warrant its own web presence and I think it's time to keep it distinct from my own personal blog. Over the next few months I will be structuring the new Challenge blog to contain all of the content from the previous four events so it's self-contained and can project a sense of its own history.

Also, a dedicated blog allows me to be able to assign the participants of the Challenge as author/contributors. This is quite significant as it will give the participants more flexibility and control on how their submissions are handled while also alleviating a portion of the workload from me. (Don't worry, I will still act as editor and will post entires for those who either cannot, or do not, wish to mess with posting their own entries.)

2) In order for me to better keep on top of the entries I am assigning each participant a day of the week in which his or her work will be posted to the Challenge blog. This, in turn, helps me spread out the work over the week and gives me Sunday's off to work on my own stuff and manage the Fortnight Theme Rounds.

Nonetheless, during the first and final weeks of the Challenge the assigned days will be ignored, allowing people to send in their entries as they wish, maintaining the Challenge's signature pell-mell start and mad race to the finish.I hope this all makes sense. I'll be sending out an email in a week or so to all the participants to go over the finer mechanics of the Challenge. Up Next: Our Prize Sponsors!